Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1904, by F orkst and Stream Publishing Co. ^ 
iRMS, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 190S, 
J VOL. LXV.— No. 21. 
( No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
LOOKING AHEAD. 
^The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
lent, instruction and information between American sportsmen, 
‘he editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
ages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be re- 
arded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
f current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
orrespondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. Terms: For single 
opies, $4 per year, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
articulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
The object of this journal will be to studiously 
promote a healthful interest in outdoor recre= 
tion, and to cultivate a refined taste for natural 
tbiectS Announcement in first number of 
^ Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
I “IN THE LODGES OF THE BLACKFEET.” 
f We have in hand a series of chapters entitled “In the 
'..edges of "he -Blackfeet,” in which is told the life story 
if a squawman who has lived for many years with the 
Blackfoot Indians of Montana. The story is autobio- 
graphic in form, is related without reserve, and is a 
nost intimate and graphic picturing of wild Indian life 
on the plains, and — after the wild life was over — of 
Indian ways on the reservation. The chapters are of 
sustained interest; the publication will be begun in our 
next issue. 
BIRDS, CATS AND POISON. 
The destruction of Dr. Hodge’s domesticated ruffed 
grouse by poisoning is a most regrettable incident. While 
the miscreant who did the deed has not been detected, it 
[is assumed that the act was prompted by revenge; and it 
may jiave been done by some one whose cat had been 
killed by Dr. Hodge. As has been told, trespassing and 
marauding cats have been the most serious factor Dr. 
Hodge has had to contend with. Such cats as had own- 
ers known to him he captured and returned to their 
homes; vagrants and strays he trapped and chloro- 
formed. By this course — human nature being what it is — 
he incurred the enmity of the owners of the destroyed 
cats ; and — human nature being what it is — one may read- 
ily conceive that some master of a roving feline, which 
had been done to death by Dr. Hodge, might regard the 
doing to death of the birds as a feasible mode of squar- 
ing the account. 
The detestable deed of the bird poisoner may rightly 
be denounced in no measured terms; but the denuncia- 
tion is not likely to affect the bird poisoner. The aver- 
age owner of a cat or a dog is imperyious to protests 
against the tramp proclivities of his semi-feral animal ; 
he hears of neighbors’ chickens destroyed and garden 
plants devastated without a qualm. Tell him that his 
cat has killed your canary and he receives the intelli- 
gence with a superior sort of commiserative smile. 
Warn him that you have tame game birds and that he 
must keep his cats at home, his answer is a sneer. Pro- 
tect your own birds on your own grounds by killing the 
trespassing vermin, his recourse is to the arsenic bottle 
— if his cat may not live to prey on your birds, your 
birds shall not be left alive. This is the line of reason- 
ing to which the events at Worcester point. 
Dr. Hodge’s loss of tamed partridges first by cats and 
then by cats’ owners is unusual, extraordinary and note- 
worthy, only because it is unusual, extraordinary and 
noteworthy to have live wild game birds in one’s pos- 
session and as the fruits of successful rearing and keep- 
ing. But only in this nature of the bird victims is the 
case out of the common. The domestic cat belongs in 
the class of wild animals ' denominated vermin. It is 
vermin artificially maintained by mankind. That it is 
a species of vermin purposely and artificially perpetu- 
ated by human society, diminishes in no respect its preda- 
tory attributes. So long as there are cats in the com- 
munity, the creature will prey on the community. 
Experim.enters with game birds must always reckon with 
the cat. And with the cat owner, which is to say, with 
poisoi7, , . _ 
We all know something of the difficulties of Christmas 
shopping and are all subject to the universal strong ten- 
dency to put off the purchasing of Christmas gifts until 
the last moment; when something that might have been 
done deliberately and comfortably a few days or weeks 
earlier is done at last — if accomplished at all — in a hurry, 
among a crowd, and often in a very unsatisfactory way. 
In this matter we are speaking two words for our- 
selves to one for anyone who may wish to purchase any 
of the Forest and Stream books as Christmas gifts. 
The last few days before the holidays are commonly 
crowded wdth book orders to such an extent that it is 
difficult to fill them on time. Besides that, the Christ- 
mas mails are so crowded, and the post office officials 
so overworked that ever}rthing going through the mails 
is delayed and packages which, under ordinary condi- 
tions, would have had plenty of time for transit, are now 
thrust aside, delayed and received late. 
We can assure those who will number books among 
the gifts they are to select, that it will be better for them 
and better for us, if they will send us their orders for 
Christinas books now instead of one, two or three weeks 
later. 
BUFFALO FOR THE WICHITA RESERVE. 
It is recognized that efforts to perpetuate the buffalo 
by maintaining small herds in captivity even in the larger 
zoological parks and on cattle ranges is doomed to fail- 
ure by reason of the deterioration due to inbreeding and 
the stagnation of life in confinement. The only practi- 
cable way in which the species may be preserved, if at 
all, is to restore primitive conditions. This means giving 
wide ranges in natural wilderness.. The adaptability of 
some of the Forest Preserves to such use has been noted 
in these columns, and it has been urged that small herds 
of buffalo should be put on the reserves and there be 
maintained and protected by the Government. A very 
practical step in this direction has just been taken by the 
New York Zoological Society, which has offered to sup- 
ply to the Government a herd of buffalo gathered to- 
' gether from widely different sources to be liberated on 
the Wichita Reserve. The offer has been formally made 
to the Secretary of Agriculture , and the Society has de-. 
dared its readiness to provide the buffalo whenever the 
Government shall have fenced a suitable area for them 
on the Reserve. The action of the Society is generous 
and patriotic. W^e trust that we may have the satisfac- 
tion of recording the establisment of the Wichita herd. 
REAVER IN TOWN. 
New York is a wonderful city. Its wonders may be 
enumerated in millions, if one wish — the population ex- 
ceeds 4,000,000; the budget for 1906 is nearly $117,000,000; 
the Subway carried 106,000,000 passengers in the first 
year, and there are a thousand or more millionaires liv- 
hig>in. the city and paying or not paying taxes here. But 
the wonderful thing to be noted just now is that New 
York city has a beaver colony “in its midst,” a band of 
live, working, dam-building beavers. The morning 
papers of Monday related that several hundred visitors 
in the Bronx Zoological Park last Sunday witnessed a 
sight altogether novel and marvellous when the place is 
considered. It was the felling of a large oak tree by the 
beavers of Beaver Lake, in the course of operations for 
the provision of winter quarters. The spectators saw 
the final cuttings by the beavers, the swaying and fall- 
ing of the tree across the stream, and then the work 
of the beavers which followed immediately toward the 
completion of the dam. It was an object lesson one 
would go far into the woods to see, and it is only one of 
a multitude of pictures of wild life provided for New 
Yorkers in the Bronx. 
The establishment of the Bronx beaver colony is a 
restoration of one of original wild species which have 
been closely identified with New York. If we may trust 
the history which is told in street names, there must 
have been beaver in the streams of Manhattan Island in 
the old days, for Beaver street, a canon which winds its 
way amid the towering skyscrapers of the lower part of 
the city, is reputed to have taken its name from the 
beaver which frequented the locality; and nearby, on the 
front of a building at the corner of Wall and Nassau 
streets, a cartouche bears the figure of a beaver in com- 
memoration of the ancient denizens of the precincts now 
populated by bulls and bears. The builders of the Sub- 
way have decorated several of the stations with distinc- 
tive and appropriate designs for which they have found 
the motives in the historic associations. In the frieze of 
the Bowling Green station is shown a game of bowls 
as played on the green of colonial days, from which the 
present little park takes its name; at Fulton street, 
named for Robert Fulton, the motive is the inventor’s 
first steamboat, the Clermont; and in the station at Astor 
Place, taking its name from Astor, the fur trader, is 
shown the beaver, significant of the beaver trapping,, in 
which the Astor wealth had its origin. 
In the late New York election a State Island candidate 
announced as his platform plank a proposition that rnos- 
quitoes ought to be exterminated from the island,, and 
declared that, if elected, he would drive the insects oyer 
into New Jersey. He was not elected, the inference b-emg 
that the Staten Islanders preferred the rival candi-date 
and mosquitoes to the insect exterminator without them. 
The opposition press was inclined to make light < 3 f The 
mosquito as a campaign issue, but there, is np'thing 
ridiculous about it. . We are gradually acquiring a .knowl- 
edge of the mosquito in its relation to public health 
wFich, when the facts shall be fully and popularly appre- 
ciated, will give it dignity for campaign plafformsjyln 
New Orleans and Havana and other Southern, localities 
to-day no one would dream of making light of the mos- 
quito as a subject of party principle. Only in less de- 
gree is it bound to take rank in public administration 
in all sections cursed by the malaria mosquito.,, The^rnos- 
quito is a removable and preventable plagUe.- It is; now 
tolerated and endured only because of popular igno.fafiye, 
apathy and shiftlessness, all of which attributes .off, .the 
community are characteristic in a degree possibly crim- 
inal, certainly harmful and productive of irtcreased death 
rates. The candidate for .office who proclaims mosquito 
extermination deserves at least respectful c.onside.ratibn, 
and the candidate who shall fulfill his mosquito extermi- 
nating campaign pledges will deserve gratitude if not a 
monument. 
Captain Edward Herendeen, who died, ; at : Little 
Compton, R. L, on Nov. 2, in the seventy-fifth .year, of 
his age, was a stalwart figure in that class of American 
masters of whaling ships who have been ranked aihong 
the finest practical navigators of the- American mercan- 
tile marine. He was for many years engaged in ‘wh'ajing 
on the North Pacific; and was an officer of one of the 
first ships to winter at the mouth of the Mackenzie.- ;The 
heroic fiber of the man was shown when he was found 
among the few who made that perilous expedition .into 
the ice after the great , disaster to the whaling fleet in. the 
’80s, and with . his small party rescued one of. the two ves- 
sels which had survived the crush of the floe ice. In 
1872-4 Captain Herendeen was sailing master of. ' the 
United States revenue cutter Yukon, and : was dater a 
member of the international polar expedition to Point 
Barrow, and after the return of the expedition' spent 
three years at that isolated' outpost. . It was 'Captain 
Herendeen’s misfortune, after having acquired a com- 
petence, to make losing investments which swept 
away his modest fortune; and following this he beeaxue 
captain of the watch at the Smithsonian Institution, His 
personal qualities endeared him to his associates,, ;and 
his rich store of information on Arctic subjects was 
freely drawn on. Captain Herendeen was a. valued con- 
tributor to the natural history columns of the Forest 
AND Stream, his communications carrying always the 
conviction that comes of full knowledge. 
»* ■■ ■ 
Owing to the mistake of his assistant, a conjurer at 
a Berlin music hall was killed by catching on his fore- 
head a heavy metal ball instead of a light-weight globe 
which the assistant forgot to substitute. This was clearly 
a case of didn’t-know-it-was-loaded, though the comment 
may seem flippant and heartless. 
R 
Mr. Raymond S. Spears has a reply to our Albany 
correspondent respecting the disputed Adirondack land 
sales. The subject is attracting much attention, and one 
result of the discussion will be to insure a more careful 
scrutiny of future laqd transactions in the North Wooci.'ij 
